Endgame content is the bread and butter of any ARPG. Top tier players blast through the campaign, skipping cut-scenes and dialogue, just to get the chance to spend hundreds of hours farming for those sweet upgrades. As the game sits right now, World Bosses are one of the ways players attempt to grab those upgrades, head into tier 3 or 4 and wait for the icon. However, there’s a problem. If you aren’t camping the spawn – standing directly on top of them – that world boss will be dead before you can complete your skill rotation. Let alone if you are late to the fight by 30 seconds – now you’re matched with the team struggling the most. As the playerbase’s power has grown, the difficulty of World Bosses has become almost trivial.
The Three Second World Boss Kill
Recently covered right here on Icy Veins, a group of players annihilated a world boss in 3 seconds. This is definitely a new record for the fastest World Boss kill. Clearly, these players are pushing the pinnacle of endgame content; their min-maxed builds and gear have been perfected and they deserve this three second achievement.
So Let’s Talk About It: Are World Bosses Too Easy Now?
During beta testing, Blizzard forums were flooded with threads lamenting the difficulty of World Bosses. Player levels were much lower, Aspects used were not optimized, and no one had the gold for the massive costs of continuing to reroll items for useful stats. Now, it’s just the opposite (well, aside from the gold for rerolls). As we just saw in the video above, players are decimating World Bosses before they can even attack. Without a forensic analyst from Blizzard themselves, we can only guess what exactly happened. Maybe an exploit, or maybe players have simply found ways to break through the damage ceiling. We don’t know for sure, but what we do know is this: World Boss fights are not challenging.
So is this the future? Once we all hit max level the World Bosses are no more difficult than a standard elite.
I think that’s exactly where we are, and it simply can’t stay that way. Even if you are one of the most dedicated players, with a powerful build, armed with perfect gear, and you know precisely how the encounter works, you simply shouldn’t be able to nullify endgame content like a world boss.
That’s My Opinion. So, How Do We Fix This?
Blizzard needs to change how high tier world boss encounters work, and I don’t think it would be that hard. First, if you are level 90+ and you enter the World Boss arena in tier 4 an option pops up on your screen. Do you wish to fight the pinnacle version of this world boss? Yes or no? Of course, we would pick yes.
Now we’re matched up with a big baddie of a World Boss alongside a maximum of nine other level 90+ players. Then the fight begins, mechanics don’t need to be altered but should certainly be buffed. One-shotting a player is not out of the question and needing to know where to stand and when, it’s a requirement. This would force the player base to group up, clans would need to get organized and some planning would be involved to win. I want to see some havoc! Ghosts floating all around the World Boss, players wondering what happened. Why are we doing this? Is it worth it?
However, once you beat it, and that explosion of loot erupts – something special needs to happen. If you take down this monstrosity with your group, the goblins appear. Treasure Goblins all over, scattering around the arena, not two or three, but a dozen – maybe even two dozen. Imagine that moment of joy turning into panic, the fun begins! Everyone scrambles to fight the goblins, to resurrect their allies, to stop those loot-carrying, gold hoarding, little monsters from opening portals and escaping. Make it worth my time, make the drop feel like a lottery. If Blizzard did that, I would happily say “This is some amazing World Boss content”.
So, we talked about it and that’s where I stand. Or Blizzard can release world tier 5 and 6 (as they very likely will).